Three little related things I so love …

Three things I love: a blank sheet of paper, an early sunny morning, and a blank calendar. All three hold enormous expectation. Great expectations, you might say.

This morning I am delighting in all three. After years of meetings, assignments, appointments, obligations, I’m facing that blank calendar with the excitement of filling it with things I like to do.

Like lunching with friends. Writing with abandon (and no deadline). Thinking. Relishing long stretches of uninterrupted time to get jobs done that I have long postposed. Ordering priorities.

Life and all it entails rarely gifts one with such blank spaces. Oh, they are there, but I — a firstborn — am quite good at putting them off to make sure I accomplish the “musts.” The “musts” have always come before the “want tos” and as one who prioritizes to a fault, I usually let the “musts” regularly shove the “want tos” way down my list.

Psychology tells us what gives us the strength to postpone life’s pleasures — the “want tos.” Simple trust. In a 2013 study, the theory was put to test. The researchers concluded:

Delaying gratification is hard, yet predictive of important life outcomes, such as academic achievement and physical health. Prominent theories focus on the role of self-control, hypersensitivity to immediate rewards, and the cost of time spent waiting. However, delaying gratification may also require trust in people delivering future rewards as promised.*

For me, having a strong father — who I can report without equivocation never let me down — established a fundamental trust that extended far beyond my nuclear family. Add to that a mother whose most frequent statement was one of keen optimism, I was imbued with an indestructible sense of hope.

WANT TO READ CAIRNAERIE?

In a sweeping historical fiction, Cairnaerie unfolds across the landscape of Civil War Virginia and the 1920s eugenics movement that follows.

In a world where gentility is the lifeblood of society and some rules are never to be broken, Geneva Snow dares to love a forbidden man. Her decision shatters her steadfast father, who hides her away in his mountain estate, Cairnaerie, as if she has died.

After years of solitude, she emerges, hoping to repair the family she betrayed and to leave a legacy worthy of the father she loved and lost. She engages an unwitting, young history professor for help, but when the forces of malevolence and revenge converge, the family’s long-kept secret is exposed. And for a second time, Geneva faces a calamity of her own making.